Lognormal Solutions Inc. and Rose & Associates, LLP know that play-based methods enhance prospect risk analysis. Integrating the two processes helps improve profitability for your company by providing management with more consistent inputs for more informed decisions. By its very nature, play analysis integrates all available data into a coherent interpretation to highlight the most prospective play segments and where the greatest value from additional information would be gained.

Play-based exploration is more than making regional maps — the value comes from using the maps to guide strategy and validate prospect chance assessments. For maximum value, the summary maps that integrate the regional, interpretations must be 1) easily updated as new information is obtained and 2) directly linked to prospect chance and volume assessments, so that changes made in map form are quickly conveyed to prospect chance assessments, and vice versa.

Many tools on the market suffer from one or more of the following drawbacks:

Too complex, or overly tied to complex basin modeling software

Supported only a ‘traffic light approach’ for making color-coded maps that conveyed just relative probability

Generation of the composite maps were controlled by a series of rules that governed the colors – if you did not like the result you had to trick the software into providing a different solution

The interface has the standard ‘look and feel’ of any ARC project with embedded code that drives data importing/exporting/analysis/display, map layer consolidation, and linking of prospect to play data. All aspects of play analysis are controlled from one simple toolbar (arrow).

Managing the Key Well Analysis Process

The user establishes a ‘play hierarchy’ for the stratigraphy of the study area, and then a placeholder is created for each interval for each well loaded into the dataset. By using the import function for IHSE (or other vendor or company data sources), much of the key data is auto-captured.

Even dry holes and invalid tests often provide key news about the extent of different chance elements (e.g., effective reservoir). Using a ‘wagon wheel’ format, each well is classified as an invalid or valid test (with failure mode for valid tests indicated). Statistics for all wells, or just valid tests, can be extracted, even by trap type.